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  1. Member
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    I picked up two JVC VCR's sight-unseen. Testing the two out, the S9911U seems to have serious contrast issues. Anyone know what could be up with it? I have seen some similar washout in others' videos, but not sure what it's called. Not only is everything washed out, but what should be white has a bluish hue instead.

    Both were recorded with the same settings on the VCR's, and same settings on the PC. Currently going through an ATI HD 750 USB capture device on the PC, into VirtualDub with lossless compression. Back-to-back recordings.

    Comparison photo:

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    I bought a S9911U brand-new when they were fresh on the store shelves, several years back. Brought it back the next day; bad flashing and sparkling on brights. The second copy liked to amuse itself by blinking off to a blank screen every 10 seconds or so. Returned that one back as well. Never went with JVC again.

    The bottom photo has "hot" whites, some of which are turning blue and are on the edge of clipping. There are crushed blacks in the dog, whose color and texture are starting to look a little posterized ("plastic").
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:06.
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    Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
    I bought a S9911U brand-new when they were fresh on the store shelves, several years back. Brought it back the next day; bad flashing and sparkling on brights. The second copy liked to amuse itself by blinking off to a blank screen every 10 seconds or so. Returned that one back as well. Never went with JVC again.

    The bottom photo has "hot" whites, some of which are turning blue and are on the edge of clipping. There are crushed blacks in the dog, whose color and texture are starting to look a little posterized ("plastic").
    I'm not sure the video can be fixed in hardware - when I digitized them some 10 years ago (into straight MPEG 12-mbit since space and processing power was an issue back then), some of these videos always looked like someone had taken a contrast slider in some app and maxed it out. These are probably VCR's 4 and 5 I've seen them on, and running straight into the TV looks no better. I believe this specific tape I've seen output from the recorder it was created on, and it showed similar whites and blacks (and other bright colors). I'll have to see if they can dig that out again.

    The picture from the S9900U is better than the ones I have from the original recordings I did before, after I had tested VCR's we had around, and used the best one for the job. Much of that is likely due to me going AVI this time though.
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  4. Banned
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    Capturing VHS to lossless AVI is the way it should be done. By "lossless" AVI I mean losslessly compressed with huffyuv or Lagarith, not with something like xvid. IF you captured to lossy encoded AVI instead of lossless, you downgraded the possibilities for cleanup from "maybe" to "impossible".
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:06.
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  5. Formerly 'vaporeon800' Brad's Avatar
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    I believe the peaks are pre-clipped, like here. I guess the video board inside is messed up?

    For the S9900U, lower the contrast of your ATI 750's proc amp and raise the brightness.
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    I'm finding some time to mess with it more. Composite looks fine on the 9911. It has something to do with its svideo output.

    I can't get a driver install to work on Windows 7 or Windows 8 that give me control over the picture settings. I should have tvw 600 USB arriving any day now to try instead. Picked up the 750 since they're cheap, and it appeared that the cable is the same as the other models. The 600 is missing its input cable.
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  7. Formerly 'vaporeon800' Brad's Avatar
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    I'm able to control the ATI 750 (CD version V3) Proc Amp on Windows 7 using this software, which came with the Diamond VC500. I have no idea why it works, but I just open up VirtualDub's capture mode, then open up this app, select the appropriate input and adjust the controls.

    Sorry to tell you, the 600's spaghetti cable has a different end on it. It's about half the size of the 750's.
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    I just wanted to come back and say thanks. I picked up a third VCR which improves the video quality further. I am now getting more detail and less color bleeding. I am also using the ATI TVW 600 USB now, which is giving me working picture controls. As far as adjusting brightness and contrast - changes do not bring out any more detail in the whites or blacks of that VHS tape. The default brightness 110 and contrast 32 appears to capture everything quite well for that tape. Any tweaks and I just get darker whites or brighter blacks with no useful detail gains. That tape was recorded with an RCA CC-616.
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